Footfalls.

Every child growing up wonders what it would be like to be a super hero. The grass is always greener on the other side.

Footsteps.  He loved the sound of footsteps.  Buried just beneath the murmurs of conversation, passing cars, and even the rogue bicycle bell, were the sounds of crunching gravel, scuffs on pavement, and clacking high heels.

 

He didn’t have to walk these crowded streets; he chose to.  A guilty pleasure.  No…  An addiction.  Nothing in the world made him feel more relaxed than the simple act of feeling his feet tap against cement.  With some concentration he could manage to hone in on his own clopping boots.  Was there anything more plain, more wondrous, more exquisitely human, than travel by foot?

 

He stopped, mid-stride, before a wide window of an office supply store.  The objects were beautiful, gleaming, and oh so wonderfully simplistic.  Staplers, fountain pens, rulers, inkpads, erasers, compasses, folders, and ledgers, all stared back at him.  Oh how he dreamed as a child of counting and calculating.  Orderly little numbers organized into perfect rows.  Red and black inks, dancing down the page.  He had known early on what he longed to be when he grew up.  …Simple.

 

The masses marching past parted like the Red Sea around him.  Some even stopped dead in their tracks.  Not to look longingly into the window as he had, but they did look, and stare…  at him.  They always stared when he did this.  When he went for his “walks.”  He guessed that was a very human thing to do as well, staring at what you fail to understand.  Maybe he should try that too sometime.

 

A far off cry tickled the inside of his ear and he sighed trying to ignore it for just a moment.  He reached out a sympathetic hand, brushing his fingers almost apologetically, across the glass that stood between him and the desktop trinkets.  His eyes no longer looked into the store but landed upon his reflection on the windowpane.  How he longed to wear a suit and tie.  Maybe even a fedora if the occasion should call for it; though he still didn’t fully understand hats.

 

It didn’t matter.  There was no suit and tie option for him.  The reflection on the glass was a cold reminder of that.  The bold colored costume that hugged tightly against his skin was all he could see.    There was no time for secret identities.  No time for ledgers or accounting.  Maybe in children’s books, but it didn’t work that way in the real world.  Not on this planet.

 

Damn this acute hearing and steel-like skin!  Damn them!  For with them came the curse of a sense of pity for this world’s pathetic destructive creatures.  In a moment he would be off again to save yet another thankless, feeble, life.

 

Oh, how he dreamed as a child that one day he would grow up and fit in with these beings.  To hell with being special!  A second cry for help filled his ear and resentment filled his mind.  His hand drew across the glass with a soft squeal, while his eyes remained firmly placed again on the ledger in the display.  The glass was so smooth.  So thin.  So very, very, delicate.  So…

 

The trickling chime of shattered glass rained down as his unscathed hand reached through it.  Nothing followed.  Traffic seemed to come to a halt, and conversation ceased as if it had never known existence.

 

Staring… such a human habit when a thing was beyond comprehension.  The silence that spread through the street was deafening as he reached in and took hold of the leather-bound blank chart paper.  A third cry for help.  It was somewhere too far for any human ears to notice.  He caressed the ledger and tucked it beneath one arm.  His cape drew forward as if to protect it.  A conclusion had been arrived at.  No more flying.  Of course he would still save those that cried out to him.  If he managed to reach them in time.  When convenient for him.

 

Lone crunching of boots across broken glass; this would be his new favorite of all sounds.  Never before, had he felt more… human.

Reviews

[Sam]

This is a very descriptive piece and it's extremely well written. I like it. Nicely done!